Law firms are engaged in organized provision legal services on a reimbursable basis. Our top 10 law firms in Russia will tell you about a dozen such Russian companies.
10 Vegas Lex
This company was founded in 1995. It employs approximately 100 lawyers. The central office is located in Moscow. There are also regional offices located in Krasnodar and Volgograd. Vegas Lex cooperates with Russian regional partners, as well as partners from other countries. "Vegas Lex" takes on difficult legal tasks, takes part in complex and large-scale projects. The company's area of interest includes the problems of the legal industry and various areas of the Russian economy.
9 YUST
This company was founded in 1992. It has great professionals judicial practice: lawyers with a high level of professional responsibility. YUST employs over 100 lawyers who have been recognized by both Russian and international legal communities. The company employs experts who support complex projects at the federal level.
8 White & Case
White & Case LLC is a large international law firm. It was founded in 1901 in New York (USA). Its offices are located in various countries around the world. Including, the office of this company is located in Russia, in Moscow.
7 Yakovlev & Partners
The history of this company began more than 25 years ago. Initially, lawyers created a Society with limited liability MaTIK, which was engaged in marketing, trading, engineering and consulting. In 1992, it changed its name to MaTIK. Yakovlev and Partners, and the company's activities focused on legal support of the activities Russian business in Russia and other countries. In 2003, the Moscow Bar Association "Yakovlev and Partners" was founded. As a result, Yakovlev & Partners offers legal consulting services and represents clients in courts.
6 Egorov Puginsky Afanasiev & Partners
This company was founded in 1993. Its offices are located in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kyiv and Minsk. Associated offices are located in London (UK) and Washington (USA). Providing legal support, the company offers advice on a wide range of legal issues in various fields.
5 Pepeliaev Group
This law firm offers a full range of legal services. It operates in all regions of Russia, and also operates in other countries. The company employs over 160 lawyers. Pepeliaev Group provides legal support to more than 1,500 companies whose activities are related to various industries economy.
4 KPMG
This company is an audit and consulting firm and provides audit services. Also, the list of services offered by KPMG includes tax and legal advice.
3 Dentons
This company is an international law firm. It provides a full range of legal services worldwide. Dentons employees are specialists who have extensive experience in advising on all types of law. The company offers innovative business solutions that enable successful transactions and dispute resolution. "Dentons" is engaged in projects of different scales.
2 Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner (Russia) LLP
This company is the Russian practice of the international law firm Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner. The Moscow office of Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner (Russia) LLP employs 100 lawyers. They are qualified specialists in Russian and English law, as well as US law. The company provides legal support for major complex transactions and projects. It cooperates with both Russian companies and international corporations. The key specialization of this law firm is transaction support and resolution of litigation.
1 Agora
The international human rights group Agora brings together more than 50 human rights lawyers. They work on resonant cases that are related to the violation of human rights. At present, Agora lawyers and lawyers are handling over 300 cases at the same time. The company's activities are carried out in most regions of Russia. There are also permanent legal teams in Helsinki (Finland), Sofia (Bulgaria) and London (UK).
Jurisprudence as an independent academic discipline first arose in ancient Rome - it was there that a certain system of legal education appeared. However, elements of jurisprudence arose earlier.
Vedomosti publishes the second annual rating of law firms compiled by Pravo.ru. In the first study, two universal ratings were formed: 100 best Moscow and 75 regional firms; 16 industry ratings were also compiled. This year the rating has undergone major changes.
There are fewer foreigners
The number of companies included in the ratings by statistics. They are market leaders, the difference between the companies from the first fifty and the rest turned out to be too great, explains Alexander Moskovkin, director of development at Pravo.ru.
The principle of rating has also changed. The researchers abandoned the universal rating on a set of criteria, the main of which was revenue. Law firms assured that they could not be evaluated by revenue: the size does not indicate the quality of services. Besides global companies usually do not disclose revenues for national offices, and some of the world's giants were lower than the little-known Russian firms.
Initially, the researchers planned to value firms by profit and revenue per lawyer and partner. But then they abandoned this idea: some law firms understand revenue minus salaries and operating expenses (excluding partners' remuneration), while others mean account balances.
Therefore, there were simply two lists according to statistical indicators: revenue and the number of full-time lawyers. This is not a rating of the best law firms, these are ratings of firms with the highest revenue or with the largest staff of lawyers, Moskovkin explains. The data provided by the firms was checked against the databases of Rosstat, SPARK, and publications in the media.
But the list in terms of revenue turned out to be truncated: many companies, primarily international ones, although they took part in the rating, again refused to disclose financial information on the Russian office. Last time, such firms were included in the general list, but they were seriously losing in places. Now they are not in the ranking at all, so the ranks of international firms have seriously thinned out. In 2010, there were 13 in the top fifty: Skadden, Arps, Slate, Maar & Flom, Baker & McKenzie, DLA Piper, Linklaters, Allen & Overy, Salans, CMS Legal, Hannes Snellman, Macleod Dixon, Chadbourne & Parke, Debevoise & Plimpton, Noerr, Sameta. This year there are only five: two newcomers to the rating, GBLP (the company is so tightly tied to the country that market participants often call it national) and Baker Botts, as well as Noerr and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Maar & Flom; a new giant appeared on the list - though not a legal, but an auditing company, PricewaterhouseCoopers. It highlights the legal direction, explains Moskovkin.
Another innovation is the liking rating based on a customer survey. Participants of the study could name any five law firms that, from their point of view, have the highest professional reputation in the world. Russian market legal services, says Moskovkin. The firm with the highest number of recommendations, Pepeliaev Group, received 100 points.
Grandees in refuseniks
Moskovkin notes that ratings by revenue and by the number of lawyers do not always help in choosing a consultant. More representative are client ratings, in which law firms are ranked by branches of law (this year - 13 each). These lists assessed the quality and significance of the projects. Places were not awarded: firms are listed alphabetically, but divided into two groups. The most successful are allocated in the first group. And the firm, which, according to Pravo.ru analysts, has achieved the most significant success in a specific practice, is ranked first with the mark “best company”.
Akin Gump, Baker Botts, GBLP, Beiten Burkhardt, Gide Loyrette Nouel (if you do not include PricewaterhouseCoopers as law firms) became new participants in the industry ratings from major international law firms. Of the Russian players who have replenished the ratings, Moskovkin singles out FBK-Pravo, Nektorov, Saveliev and Partners and Knyazev and Partners.
However, these ratings cannot be considered complete. The researchers did not include companies that did not want to participate in the survey at all, and among the refuseniks were the leaders of the Russian, and indeed the world market. Allen & Overy, Linklaters, Baker & McKenzie, Debevoise & Plimpton have disappeared from the ratings, Moskovkin complains.
They are assigned places in the list of refuseniks - law firms, which could take far from the last places in the rating if they provided information, Pravo.ru writes. As a result, this list turned out to be almost the most prestigious. It has four of the five companies that make up the legendary magic circle: Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Linklaters (the fifth, Slaughter & May, works only in England), as well as Latham & Watkins, Herbert Smith, Baker & McKenzie , Hogan Lovells, Debevoise & Plimpton, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, White & Case, Dewey & LeBoeuf.
“The Pravo.ru rating of 2010 did not reflect the realities of the legal services market in Russia (it does not include many leading players, and the position of others on the list caused sincere surprise), and we decided to refuse to participate in the survey,” said a partner of the Moscow Office of Baker & McKenzie Alexander Bychkov.
And yet it is strange that the leaders of the world and Russian markets who refused to participate in the study were not included in the industry ratings, says an employee of one of the largest international law firms. “We are on the market, information about our projects is open, and researchers could analyze it themselves, because these are client ratings that should help choose a consultant,” he wonders.
However, despite the lack of confidence in the existing Russian ratings, market participants are convinced that the country needs a national legal rating. Western research, including the most prestigious Chambers and the Legal 500, covers only international firms and the largest Russian players (see sidebar), says Ekaterina Gorchakova, head of business development at Allen & Overy.
Company size or profitability are not the factors that clients look for when choosing a consultant, Chambers & Partners editor Katherine McGregor wrote earlier. Perhaps Pravo.ru should conduct a separate study of Russian law firms, but evaluate them not only by revenue, recommends Alexander Nektorov, a partner at Nektorov, Saveliev and Partners.
conclusions
Rated companies have participated in projects worth close to 1.5 trillion rubles, writes Pravo.ru. The revenue of the companies included in the top 50 in Moscow amounted to almost 11.1 billion rubles in 2010, the participants of the regional top 50 - a little less than 2 billion, according to the explanation to the study. This is about 40% of the revenue of large law firms, Moskovkin believes. In the SPARK database, the revenue of the sector "activities in the field of law" for 2010 is estimated at 73.3 billion rubles, a year earlier it was 20 billion less.
Judging by the money earned in 2010, the leading law firms, both Moscow and regional, have fully recovered from the crisis, writes the deputy editor-in-chief of Pravo.ru for legal matters Ilya Horoshikh: if some practices, such as mergers and acquisitions, sank, then the fall was offset by growth in other areas.
According to the arbitration process, corporate law, the number of participants who sent questionnaires remained practically unchanged from last year, Khoroshikh continues, and for commercial real estate, intellectual property, tax law and labor law, energy - steadily growing. The activity in antimonopoly law, international arbitration, bankruptcy has especially grown - the number of participants has increased several times. Thus, we can talk about a significant increase in these practices, concludes Good.
"Kommersant" and the project LegalPractice.Ru publish the results of the study legal business in Russia. We represent the largest Russian law firms (including Russian offices of international firms), as well as recommended firms in certain areas of legal practice.
How we researched
The study was conducted by a survey method. Law firms received questionnaires specially developed by the LegalPractice.Ru project. Respondents are law firms, that is, any legal entities providing legal services, including legal education, business companies and partnerships, as well as groups of persons operating under a single brand. The mailing list is based on open sources, including Russian and international directories of law firms, publications on ratings in which Russian law firms were present, as well as Internet searches. 267 questionnaires were sent out, 143 questionnaires were received, 141 questionnaires were accepted for processing (2 questionnaires were not accepted for processing due to missing the deadline for submitting the questionnaire).
The information obtained from the questionnaires was checked against open sources, in particular through the SPARK system, the respondents' own websites, as well as media information. If discrepancies arose as a result of such a check, the researchers turned to the representatives of the respondent indicated in the questionnaire for clarification, after which they independently made a decision to correct or save the information provided.
At the same time, we are aware that our resources are not large enough for a comprehensive study of the Russian legal services market. Therefore, we ask representatives of law firms that are not included in the rating to assist in the study in the future, including providing their data in a timely and complete manner.
Two quantitative indicators were used to rank law firms: the firm's revenue and the number of firm's lawyers, including partners. Given that in most cases respondents provided data on their revenue on a confidential basis, we do not publish this data. In cases where respondents did not provide revenue data, we independently made an expert estimate of the respondent's estimated revenue, based on data on the number of lawyers of the firm, as well as on the effective hourly rate of law firms of a similar level of business reputation and market segment.
Despite the fact that the expert group of the rating compilers consists entirely of professional lawyers, we are adherents of the theory of Adam Smith. Therefore, we evaluate the revenue indicator as the key from the point of view of the economics of the activities of a law firm and the main rating criterion. It demonstrates that the company is in demand in the market, its services are in demand. Other indicators such as business reputation, qualifications, opinions of customers or colleagues in the shop are subjective, easier to manipulate and therefore, in our opinion, cannot be used to rank market participants.
Only those respondents who provided reliable and verifiable data on revenue and number of lawyers are included in the Law Firm Performance Ranking. Efficiency is calculated as net operating revenue per lawyer—in other words, how much money a professional member of the legal team brings to their firm. At the same time, we did not differentiate into partners, advisers and associates (senior lawyers, middle lawyers, or middle lawyers, and junior lawyers), since in different firms the functionality, competencies and rights of team members are so different that the person who works as a senior lawyer in one firm, may apply for a junior partner (or salaried partner) or advisor position in another firm.
In industry ratings, the monetary approach to determining the leading firms in certain areas of practice is generally retained: as the main criterion, firms' data on revenue by key practices were used and compared with the absolute values of competitors. The weight value of this criterion was estimated as K1 0.7. However, as additional criteria with a weight of K2 0.3, data from international rankings, customer reviews (taking into account the quality of customers and the cost of a client project) were used. All participants in the industry rating were ranked depending on the quality of the K2 criterion. The overall indicator of the rating participant was calculated by determining the specific value of the sum of both coefficients of one rating participant to the sum of the specific values of both coefficients of all participants.
This rating is based on the results of a survey conducted by FutureToday, a partner of Kommersant, among graduates of leading law schools. 362 students and recent graduates of four Moscow universities leading the ranking of law schools were surveyed (see p. 4).
The attractiveness rating shows the results of the brand promotion in the labor market, as well as the opinions potential employees about the quality of the employer. As you can see, Russian law firms have a lot to work on here: the majority of survey participants would like to work in international law firms.
results
1. Given the confidentiality of the data provided by our respondents on the amount of revenue and other performance indicators of the company, we will not comment on how successful the results of the work of specific respondents were compared to the results for 2013. However, within general analysis and comparisons with the data of the "Kommersant" rating of law firms in 2013-2014, we note that some of our respondents managed not only to develop qualitatively, opening up new areas of their services to the market, but also to increase (in some cases by 65-70%) the amount of gross revenue. The average revenue growth of firms participating in this and last year's ratings is estimated at 19.4%, which is somewhat ahead of the inflation officially recognized by the Russian Ministry of Economy, although it does not fully compensate for the decline in revenues due to the devaluation of the ruble, if we recalculate revenue in US dollars or euros.
2. In a law firm, full partners of the firm are responsible for its development, sale of services, variety of practice areas. It's about about real partners participating in the distribution of the firm's income, and not about employees (associates) nominated as "partner" (in the market such associates are known as partners on the salary). Research shows that the number of full partners is directly proportional to revenue. Separate deviations from this pattern indicate the presence in the company of partners on a salary, for outside world presented as full partners. Undoubtedly, efficient work this direction is sometimes performed by senior lawyers and advisers, as well as the same partners on the salary, but they must be clearly and unambiguously motivated to work related to the sale of services. The best motivation besides bonuses for attracting a client, of course, is the opportunity to grow to the level of a partner. Thus, firms that want to increase revenue and market share should more actively implement the program of professional growth of colleagues, open new partner positions, and more actively attract partners from other companies with more favorable and transparent partnership conditions.
3. The study showed that when the threshold number of lawyers (not all employees of the firm, but only those involved in the provision of professional services) reaches 40-45 people, there is a significant jump in the efficiency of the law firm in terms of one lawyer. Apparently, this phenomenon is a consequence of the synergy effect, when different practices help each other sell services and conduct complex cross-industry projects. Apparently, to achieve this effect, 5-7 partners are needed to head various areas of legal practice (in the case of duplication of competencies, the synergistic effect disappears), whose projects should be implemented by 12-15 advisers and senior lawyers, 15 lawyers and 10 junior lawyers and assistants . We do not diminish the importance of other team members: accountants, couriers, drivers, security guards, secretaries, cooks, cleaners, repairmen, system administrators, marketing and PR specialists, commercial and financial directors, translators, text editors and others. useful employees working for the benefit and prosperity of law firms, but the number of support staff and the ratio of the number of employees in the back and front offices of the firm is not significant for the efficiency of the firm.
4. The study revealed a "boutique syndrome": some participants in the rating, including very large firms that occupy leading positions in the market, receive 50-80% of gross revenue from one or two practices. In conditions of a sharp change in the market situation, there are risks of losing financial stability and market share of the company. We believe that such firms should make the necessary efforts to diversify their business by developing new practices, attracting new partners, or merging / acquiring other firms
5. Pay attention to the fact that financial efficiency law firm does not always depend on the size. In the efficiency rating, firms from the second, third and even fourth ten of the top 50 turned out to be the best. This, of course, does not indicate the mismanagement of market leader firms - it’s just that their smaller counterparts are a little better with this, and they reduce the effectiveness of additional procedures, costs, work pro bono less.
Dmitry Ivanov, Maxim Chernigovskiy
Top 50 law firms by revenue
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Top 15 law firms in terms of business organization efficiency
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Ratings for individual areas of legal practice
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Rating of the attractiveness of law firms as employers (the survey was conducted among graduates of law schools)
Law is a big service based on services. Business, finance, taxation, litigation, corporate affairs, conflicts, patents, copyrights, antitrust, property, labor, arbitration, and administrative, political and social issues require legal expertise (advisory or law enforcement). This article provides short review top law firms based on recent earnings available at the time of this writing. While there are other criteria for ranking law firms (such as revenue per partner/attorney, number of lawyers, or year-over-year percentage growth), annual revenue remains the most accurate, consistent, and easy to follow:
- Baker & McKenzie: Founded in 1949 and headquartered in Chicago, Baker & McKenzie employs 4,200 lawyers with 77 offices in 47 different countries. It recently surpassed its closest competitor DLA Piper in terms of reported earnings to land in the top slot with $2.54 billion (as of June 2014).
- D.L.A. Piper: One of the largest global law firms with over 4,200 lawyers, DLA Piper emerged from a multiple merger of several international law firms in 2005. Headquartered in London and Chicago, this firm competes neck and neck for the top slot with $2.48 billion in annual revenue for 2013.
- Latham & Watkins LLP: Headquartered in Los Angeles with offices in 14 countries and over 2,000 attorneys on board, Latham & Watkins ranks third in annual revenue, with a reported $2.226 billion in 2013.
- Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP: or simply Skadden, was founded in 1948. Headquartered in New York State, Skadden has 23 offices around the world with more than 1,600 lawyers. The company's annual revenue was $2. 21 billion in 2013.
- Clifford Chance LLP: Founded in 1987 through a merger, Clifford Chance is headquartered in London with offices in 26 countries and a roster of over 3,200 lawyers. During 2013-14 his income was £1. 359 billion (about US$2.2 billion). According to the company's website, the main customer groups are "corporations from all commercial and industrial sectors, governments, regulators, trade bodies and non-profit organizations. "
- Kirkland & Ellis LLP: Kirkland & Ellis LLP was founded in 1909 and is proud to have a niche set corporate clients served by corporate, tax, litigation, intellectual and restructuring areas. With over 1,600 lawyers on board, its 2013 revenues were $2.01 billion. USA.
- Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP: Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer or simply "Freshfields" is an international law firm based in London with 28 offices and 4,859 employees in 17 countries. His income in 2013 was £1. 23 billion (approximately US$1.92 billion). While the current Freshfields were formed from a merger of British, German and German-Austrian firms in 2000, the earlier Freshfields date back to 1743. It is a member of the coveted "magic circle" of British law firms. > Linklaters LLC
- : Founded in 1838, Linklaters is another London-based global law firm. It reported revenues of £1.25bn (around £1.98bn) in 2013 and a total workforce of 4,600 across 29 offices in 26 countries. Allen & Overy
- : Headquartered in London with 46 offices in 32 countries, Allen & Overy is celebrating 84 successful years. As of April 30, 2014, her total revenue was £1.234 billion (about US$1.925 billion). Jones Day
- : Founded in 1893 in Cleveland, Ohio, Jones Day has over 2,400 attorneys in 41 offices in 19 countries. a full-service law firm in all areas of the practice of law, with recent reported revenues of $1.716 billion.
: Act f Irms can have a lot practical areas and leading global firms require experience both locally and globally. The law firms listed above successfully operate their businesses in several practice areas and efficiently manage billions in revenue.
Year of foundation 1993
Offices Moscow, St. Petersburg, Philadelphia
Managing partners Dmitry Afanasiev, Ilya Nikiforov
Number of employees 102 (54*)
Revenue in 2004$19.4 million
Revenue in 2005$24 million**
“From a certain moment, we have been the most successful law firms with a St. Petersburg residence permit,” said a partner of one of the largest law firms in an interview with Forbes. Founded in 1993 in St. Petersburg, Egorov Puginsky Afanasiev & Partners has a strong reputation as a firm trusted by the state. Representing the Foreign Ministry, the firm rescued Russian intelligence agents arrested in Qatar, helped the Federal Property Management Agency to return fishing vessels arrested abroad for debts, and the government hired this firm during a dispute with the Moscow authorities over capital real estate. The image does not prevent the company from working with private clients - for example, protecting Ilim Pulp from hostile takeover attempts by the owners of Russian Aluminum and helping Rusal itself acquire enterprises in Africa.
Pepelyaev, Goltsbat & Partners
Year of foundation 2002
Offices Moscow, Saint Petersburg
Managing partners Sergey Pepelyaev, Andrey Goltsblat
Number of employees 170 (100*)
Revenue in 2004$15.6 million
Revenue in 2005$19.5 million**
Tax specialist Sergey Pepelyaev and corporate lawyer Andrey Goltsblat began their careers in the early 1990s. Pepeliaev, Goltsblat & Partners, a law firm founded by them four years ago, managed to break out into the market leaders and even gained much more fame than its “senior” neighbors in the market, not only due to participation in high-profile cases, but also due to aggressive by the standards legal market of information policy. "The best tax consultants in Russia" - this is the opinion of market participants about the firm, which probably causes conflicting feelings among Sergey Pepelyaev and Andrey Goltsblat. It's nice to be considered the best, but the company hopes to be the first not only in this area. Over the past year and a half, the firm's lawyers have provided support for mergers, acquisitions and other business concentration transactions for a total of about $3 billion. Sergey Pepelyaev also participated in the infamous Yukos case. True, as a private lawyer.
Vegas Lex
Year of foundation 1995
Offices Moscow, Volgograd, Krasnodar, Saratov, Ulyanovsk
Managing partner Albert Yeganyan
Number of employees 73 (53*)
Revenue in 2004$5.9 million
Revenue in 2005 year$15.1 million**
According to experts, from 80% to 90% of all money in the Russian legal services market is circulated in Moscow. The central directorate of Vegas Lex is also located in Moscow, but the company sees its future in the regions. Now the company has three regional directorates - Volga, South, Nizhnevolzhskaya, and by 2007 the company will be represented in 10 regions. “Two years ago, our obsession with the regions in understanding the rest of the market looked inadequate. Our colleagues said: what are you doing? You have enough money, but why did you decide to spend it in the most stupid way? And now almost all of them open offices in the regions,” laughs Albert Yeganyan, managing partner of Vegas Lex. The ambitious plans of Vegas Lex are not limited to Russia. In the next six months, the company plans to open offices in Ukraine and Kazakhstan. The sharp increase in the company's revenue this year is explained by the appearance of RAO UES structures among its clients.
Alrud
Year of foundation 1991
Offices Moscow
Managing partners Vasily Rudomino (pictured right), Maxim Alekseev
Number of employees 53 (29*)
Revenue in 2004$4 million (e)
Revenue in 2005$5 million** (e)
The tanks are entering the city, what are you doing here?” - the notary was perplexed on August 19, 1991, certifying the signatures of Maxim Alekseev and Vasily Rudomino under the constituent documents of the Alrud company. The young lawyers were not going to wait: they found their first clients already in line at the Registration Chamber. Alrud is not as well known to the general public as other market leaders, but enjoys prestige in the professional community. Among her clients are Pharmacy Chain 36.6 and the international rating agency Moody's Investors Service. In organizing its work, Alrud strives for balance: foreign and Russian companies occupy approximately equal shares of the firm's client portfolio.
Monastyrsky, Zyuba, Stepanov & Partners
Year of foundation 1991
Offices Moscow
Managing partners Yuri Monastyrsky, Vladimir Zyuba, Alexander Stepanov
Number of employees 26 (16*)
Revenue in 2004$3 million(s)
Revenue in 2005$4 million** (e)
The "&" in the official name "Monastyrsky, Zyuba, Stepanov & Partners" hints at a desire to be like a Western law firm. One way or another, this company enjoys a reputation as a customer service specialist among foreign companies. She is also known as one of the strongest arbitration specialists in the country. Partners at other large law firms like to talk at length about their drive to be a market leader. Yuri Monastyrsky answered the Forbes question about the plans of his company very briefly: "We will work."
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